


Laundry Day

by Chocchi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocchi/pseuds/Chocchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bits?”<br/>“Mmyeah?”<br/>“Why are you wearing Jack’s jersey?”</p>
<p>OR: There is a mysterious laundry mix-up at the Haus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laundry Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhubarbpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhubarbpie/gifts).



> I spent weeks going "OH MY GOD I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT" and then I saw it.  
> The cover of the Huddle zine.  
> BITTY IN JACK'S JERSEY.
> 
> Hannza-- I'm sorry there is absolutely no hockey in this, I don't know anything about hockey. I hope you like it anyway!

Bitty’s in the process of yawning and flipping the pancakes when, behind him, Ransom makes a noise of sleepy confusion and goes, “Bits?”

“Mmyeah?”

“Why are you wearing Jack’s jersey?”

 

It’s an accident.

No, honestly. It’s a complete accident. Bitty doesn’t know how it happened-- he’s just _so tired_ that morning, alright, he was up super late working on an assignment and when he had to get up he just-- he just grabbed the first shirt he laid hand on, okay? He has no idea how it got there, all he knows is he was still mostly asleep and Ransom and Holster were outside his door hollering for food and-- and--

“It could be worse,” Lardo offers.

Bitty stares at her in disbelief. “Explain.”

“Jack could have actually found out about it.”

“He _hasn’t?_ ”

True, Jack was not in the kitchen at the time, but the ensuing chirping lasted well over ten minutes and _quiet_ would not have been the first word Bitty used to describe it.

“Shitty didn’t think he had, anyway,” Lardo says. They’re sitting on the steps up to the porch of the Haus, because Bitty is maybe freaking out about this just a little bit and Lardo is good at listening. “I mean, I had one earbud in and I was trying to work on a project, but I thought he said something about, like, diving across a table to shut Holster up when he was trying to make a joke about it? He totally snuck the shirt back into Jack’s room for you, too.”

“Oh my god,” Bitty says. “I’m baking him a pie. And maybe getting him a bouquet. Would that be overkill? I think I need to get him a bouquet.”

Lardo squints at him a little. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

“Yes?”

“I think you’re overreacting. Okay, I mean it’s really _weird_ and kind of mysterious and I’ll totally help you hunt down and chirp the shit out of whoever is responsible for this, but it’s not really that big of a deal, you know? Like, even if Jack knew, I doubt he’d care that much. It’s not like you did it on purpose. You weren’t exactly stealing his shirt like a creeper, it just happened.”

“I just--” Bitty scowls and tucks his knees up on the step, where he can wrap his arms around them and make himself smaller. “I _feel_ like I did something wrong.”

“But do you feel like you did something wrong because you actually _did_ anything wrong,” Lardo says, “Or do you feel like you did something wrong because Rans and Holster gave you shit for a solid twenty minutes afterwards? Because, Bitty. Bits. That’s an easy fix.”

“It is?” Bitty asks, hopefully.

“Absolutely, I have plenty of embarrassing stories about Ransom and Holster. I can get them off your back no problem.”

Somehow, this is not the magical solution Bitty was hoping for. He lets out a quiet moan of despair and slumps back against the porch railing.

“How did you not notice what you were wearing, anyway?” Lardo wonders, reaching over to ruffle his hair affectionately. Bitty makes an indignant noise and bats her hand away. “Seriously, that thing was huge on you, do you even have any shirts that big?”

“I don’t knooow,” Bitty whines, burying his face in his knees. “I was _so tired_ , Lardo. So tired.”

“I think,” Lardo says, “You’d feel better about this after a nap.”

Bitty is about to argue that becomingless tired _now_ won’t stop him from having _been_ so tired as to slip up in horrifically, tragically embarrassing ways in the past, but then he sees Jack and Shitty making their way up the sidewalk. So instead he blurts out, “Yeah you’re probably right thanks for the advice Lardo bye!” and scrambles inside the Haus before Jack can get close enough that Bitty might have to look him in the eye.

He really doesn’t mean to take a nap. There’s pies to bake, and showers to take, and homework to do. But then he curls up on his bed for just another ten minutes of wallowing in embarrassment and listening to music, and between one sigh and the next, he’s--

 

“Bittle.”

“Five more minutes,” Bitty sighs, pressing his face into his pillow.

“ _Bittle_. You’re going to miss dinner at this rate.”

“Dinner?” Bitty cracks an eye open. Jack is standing next to his bed, arms crossed, looking down at him with an expression of fond exasperation. “‘S way… ‘s way too early for dinner.”

“It’s six,” Jack says. Wait _what?_ Bitty scrambles into a sitting position, and nearly falls off the bed before Jack catches him by the shoulder. “Easy there.”

“I have not been sleeping for four hours,” Bitty insists. Jack raises an eyebrow. “No. You’re wrong.”

“Not according to the clocks.”

“The clocks are also wrong.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Jack says. “In the meantime, consider getting up eventually? The rest of us are heading over to the dining hall.”

“No, I’m coming, I’m coming,” Bitty says, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and groping around for his pullover. He’s sure he just threw it down somewhere, it should be right here, he knows he was wearing it when he came in from talking with Lardo--

Jack picks it up off the floor and holds it out to him.

“Thanks,” Bitty mumbles, embarrassed. He almost drops it again just trying to put it on, and then he gets stuck with it halfway over his head, and really he’s just about ready to call it a day, flop back against the pillows and go back to sleep still stuck in his own sweater when Jack reaches over and straightens him out.

“You’re a mess today,” he says, yanking the fleece the rest of the way down over Bitty’s torso. “Sleeping away the afternoon and having trouble getting dressed, what’s next? Are you going to burn a pie?”

“How _dare_ you even suggest that,” Bitty says, outraged, and by the time his sleep-fuzzy brain gets around to remembering that he has _other_ things to be embarrassed about concerning Jack, Jack has already corralled him out of the Haus and halfway to the dining hall. It feels kind of late in the interaction to retreat out of shame for something Jack definitely doesn’t even know about.

So maybe Ransom and Holster won’t stop wiggling their eyebrows at him suggestively. But whatever, okay. Whatever! If Ransom and Holster are stupid jerks who chirp poor innocent Southern bakers too much, that’s their problem, not Bitty’s. Bitty is just going to hold his head high and ignore them.

 

Through the course of dinner Ransom and Holster continue to be stupid dumb jerks who won’t stop with the eyebrows, Lardo spends a lot of time shaking her head at all of them, Bitty has to break up not one but _two_ fights between the Frogs, and he doesn’t even get a chance to talk to Shitty because Shitty gets lured into an argument about homophobia in collegiate sports that Bitty couldn’t have dragged him out of if he’d been willing to try.

By the time they’re walking home, Bitty has decided that today is just not a good day and the best course of action would be to finish his homework and go to sleep so today can be over.

“You sulking, bro?” Holster asks, with a playful shove.

“Ow,” Bitty says, scowling up at him. “I’m not sulking!”

“Nuh-uh, Holtzy,” Ransom croons, over Bitty’s head. “He’s just got his head down and his shoulders hunched because he’s _cold_ , obviously. No sulking here.”

“Oh, it all makes sense now,” says Holster, dramatically. “It’s just our poor, mal-adjusted Georgia boy, suffering through the beginning of winter once again.”

“Shouldn’t someone be saving me from y’all about now?” Bitty whines, glancing over his shoulder to see where the others are. Unfortunately, Jack and Shitty are apparently wrapped in a conversation several yards back, and Lardo’s got one arm hooked through Shitty’s to keep her from walking into anything while she fiddles with her phone. None of them look like likely saviors.

“Nah, man, they’re too busy talking about boring stuff,” Holster says. “Not entertaining things like the fact that it’s your second year at Samwell and you still haven’t adjusted to temperatures below fifty.”

“I don’t have to put up with this,” Bitty announces, and ducks back to fall into step with Jack. To his surprise, Jack stops mid-sentence to glance at him.

“Are you really that cold?”

Bitty startles a little. “Were y’all eavesdropping?”

“It’s not eavesdropping when people are talking as loud as you three were,” Lardo says, without looking up from her phone.

“Don’t listen to ‘em, Bits,” Shitty says. “You’ll get used to it eventually, takes time to adapt to a new environment ‘n’ all that.”

“It would help if you dressed for the weather,” Jack adds.

“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Bitty demands. His fleece pullover is perfectly reasonable cold-weather gear-- it’s the heaviest thing he ever had to wear in Georgia.

“It’s forty,” is all Jack says, and wow, wait, why’s he taking his jacket off? What is-- “Here.”

“Oh--” Bitty almost fumbles it. Jack gives him an amused look. “You, um-- thanks, but you don’t have to-- won’t you be cold?”

“I’m from Quebec, Bittle,” Jack says. “And it’s only another ten minutes to the Haus. I’ll survive.”

“Well…” Bitty falters. “If you’re really sure….”

“I’m really sure,” Jack says, dryly. “You don’t need help getting it on, do you? You seemed to be having difficulties earlier--”

“Very funny,” Bitty says, quickly jamming his arms through the sleeves. The jacket is heavy and warm and smells like Jack’s deodorant, plain but pleasant. “Oh my goodness. Thank you.”

“Better, huh?”

“Much.”

Ransom and Holster are practically tripping over themselves to make exaggerated scandalized faces up ahead, but Bitty totally isn’t going to tell them to stop when it means that they’re walking backwards and they _absolutely_ deserve to walk into something right about now.

“Watch where you’re going, you morons,” Jack says, and Bitty watches on with great disappointment as Ransom has to dramatically swerve, pretty much falling into Holster’s arms in his quest to dodge the light post right behind him.

“Betrayal,” Holster shouts. “What happened to ‘got your back’, Bits?”

“Jack had you covered,” Bitty says, innocently. His phone buzzes in his pocket. When he flips it open, he’s got a new text that says _not as well as hes covered u lmao. 2nd time wearin his clothes 2day much??_ “Lardo, you’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I _am_ , bro, but some chirps have to be made.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Jack sighs.

 

Bitty is _this close_ to finishing his homework for the night when there’s a knock at his door.

“Come in,” he calls. Belatedly, as the door is already swinging open, he amends, “Unless you’re Ransom and or Holster!”

“You’ll have to forgive them for whatever they did eventually,” Jack says, from the doorway.

“I should at least make them work for it,” Bitty argues. He rolls over on the bed so he can actually face Jack without awkwardly craning his neck to look over his shoulder.

“You’ll forget about it by tomorrow morning and they will not have learned anything,” Jack predicts. Rude! Bitty’s about to argue with him, but then Jack tosses something to the bed. “I found that in my room, for some reason.”

It’s his jersey.

“Um,” Bitty says.

“Yeah, I don’t know how that got there,” says Jack.

“I, um. Yep! Yeah I don’t know how that got there either. Uh. Maybe--”

“Probably the same way you ended up with mine.”

“Could’ve been a mix-up with the laundr-- wait _what?!”_

 

[To: Lardo

From: Eric]

HE KNOWS

[To:Bits

From: Lardo]

???!??!?

[To: Lardo

From: Eric]

JACK KNOWS ABOUT THE JERSEY

[To: Bits

From: Lardo]

o shit dude

[To: Bits

From: Lardo]

what did he say

[To: Lardo

From: Eric]

THAT IT WAS WAY TOO BIG ON ME

[To: Lardo

From: Eric]

AND THAT I SHOULD EAT MORE PROTEIN

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and concrit would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
